“Poor old Wynter!  Gone at last!” staring at the shaking signature at the end of the letter that speaks so plainly of the coming icy clutch that should prevent the poor hand from forming ever again even such sadly erratic characters as these.  “At least,” glancing at the half-read letter on the cloth—­"this tells me so.  His solicitor’s, I suppose.  Though what Wynter could want with a solicitor——­ Poor old fellow!  He was often very good to me in the old days.  I don’t believe I should have done even as much as I have done, without him...  It must be fully ten years since he threw up his work here and went to Australia!... ten years.  The girl must have been born before he went,”—­glances at letter—­“’My child, my beloved Perpetua, the one thing on earth I love, will be left entirely alone.  Her mother died nine years ago.  She is only seventeen, and the world lies before her, and never a soul in it to care how it goes with her.  I entrust her to you—­(a groan).  To you I give her.  Knowing that if you are living, dear fellow, you will not desert me in my great need, but will do what you can for my little one.’”

“But what is that?” demands the professor, distractedly.  He pushes his spectacles up to the top of his head, and then drags them down again, and casts them wildly into a sugar-bowl.  “What on earth am I to do with a girl of seventeen?  If it had been a boy! even that would have been bad enough—­but a girl!  And, of course—­I know Wynter—­he has died without a penny.  He was bound to do that, as he always lived without one. Poor old Wynter!”—­ as if a little ashamed of himself.  “I don’t see how I can afford to put her out to nurse.”  He pulls himself up with a start.  “To nurse! a girl of seventeen!  She’ll want to be going out to balls and things—­at her age.”

As if smitten to the earth by this last awful idea, he picks his glasses out of the sugar and goes back to the letter.

“You will find her the dearest girl.  Most loving, and tender-hearted; and full of life and spirits.”

“Good heavens!” says the professor.  He puts down the letter again, and begins to pace the room. “‘Life and spirits.’  A sort of young kangaroo, no doubt.  What will the landlady say?  I shall leave these rooms”—­with a fond and lingering gaze round the dingy old apartment that hasn’t an article in it worth ten sous—­“and take a small house—­somewhere—­and—­ But—­er——­ It won’t be respectable, I think.  I—­I’ve heard things said about—­er—­things like that.  It’s no good in looking an old fogey, if you aren’t one; it’s no earthly use,”—­standing before a glass and ruefully examining his countenance—­“in looking fifty, if you are only thirty-four.  It will be a scandal,” says the professor mournfully.  “They’ll cut her, and they’ll cut me, and—­what the deuce did Wynter mean by leaving me his daughter?  A real live girl of seventeen!  It’ll be the death of me,” says the professor, mopping his brow.  “What”—­wrathfully—­“that determined spendthrift meant, by flinging his family on my shoulders, I——­ Oh! Poor old Wynter!”